From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

André de Lorde, (July 111869-1942) born in France, the son of a nobleman whose title was more impressive than his fortune, was the chief author of the Grand Guignol plays. His evening career was as a dramatist of terror; in the day, he worked as a librarian in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. He wrote more than a hundred plays, all of them devoted chiefly to the exploitation of terror.

In the 1920s, he was elected "Prince of Terror" (Prince de la Terreur) by his peers.